“Nobody. Well . . .”
“Well?”
“Well, my brother was here. Nicholas Palihnic. But—”
“Where can we get in touch with him?”
I pulled out my wallet. “This is his card.” Tsilzer tucked it in the back of his notebook without so much as scanning the name. He turned toward Angie.
“Do you have anything to add?”
“No.” Angie shook her head.
“Awright, that’ll do it for now.” He smiled politely at us, looking from one to the other, in a way that might have meant “Have a good night” or “I’ll find out more from you two later.” Doubtless, Tsilzer intended it that way.
I guess we don’t get the Good Citizenship decal for our window for this kind of mildly evasive behavior in the face of the fact that someone may have just been murdered. But as a garden-variety cynic, I have a fundamental distrust of those with the power to subjugate me. As a denizen of New York City, where the police are constantly out to impound or summons your car, distrust of the cops is endemic. And did I mention the hidden cameras? The police have taken to video surveillance of the citizenry at large, you know, for our own good. There are actually cameras installed at certain stoplights that take a photo of you running a yellow signal. Suspicion breeds suspicion. Some may prefer to see this as government mothering, but to my eye they’re setting themselves up as zookeepers. Which by elimination makes me one of the caged animals. In the parlance of our times, “I’m not comfortable with that.”
It might be different if I had any reason to believe that the NYPD had half the savvy of Hawaii Five-0. I’d put my life in Steve McGarrett’s hands any day.
The whole dog-and-pony show folded up and was off our front stoop in a little under an hour. The NYPD have had lots of practice and are good at this sort of detail.
When they were gone, I called Dudley. He was a little put off by our Gotham Club disappearance until I outlined our predicament.
“There’s a bad wind in the valley, Gawth. You need protection! You git yourself down here first thing tomorrow. I’ve got something in the personal-security department, something experimental. Just the thing.”
“Experimental? I don’t like the sound of that.”
“You could be a test pilot.”
The words test pilot, as inflected by a southern accent, have the most ominous ring. I see smoke rising from the distant high desert, heat-shimmering images of ambulances racing to a crash site where I’ve plowed into the ground at Mach 1.
“I don’t think so.”
“For Angie’s sake, Gawth!”
“Look, I’m beat. Can we talk about that tomorrow?”
“Dudley’s gonna get you wired one way or the other!”
“Sure, sure. Hey, Dudley, lemme ask you this. This business with the color television as, you know, a mind-control thing.”
There was an uncharacteristic silence on the other end.
“Dudley?”
“Yes?”
“What do you think about the color-TV thing? Is it possible?”
“M-maybe. I really wouldn’t know.” Ordinarily, there wasn’t anything on which Dudley would decline to opine, especially in the technology field. Except, of course, the particulars of his electronic devices. Or any of the “unmentionable” agencies he used to work for. Had I touched on something about which he knew a great deal but “couldn’t talk about”?
“I see. Well, let’s talk tomorrow.”
“Yes, perhaps we will talk tomorrow,” he said woodenly, and hung up.
The door buzzer sounded. Angie paused mid-pour from a jug of mountain Chablis and bit her lip.
“Should we get it?”
I went over to the squawk box. “Who is it?”
“KGB, eh?”
“Otto?”
“KGB, Garv.”
I buzzed in the runt, and he burst into the room. He always shouldered the front door like there were a couple of Cossacks holding it shut from the inside.
“My friends, vhat you do? KGB, they here, I know I see.” He took Angie by the chin. “You lookink, eh? Yan-gie, she good? I dunno. I very ’fraid my friends, maybe pizdyets.” You don’t want to know what pizdyets means precisely, but let’s just say it’s akin to the less vulgar kaput.
“Lego my chin!” Angie swatted his hand away. “We’re okay, Otto, relax.”
“Not okay. I know. I lookink, I see voman, red dress, and she not lookink, Garv!” He wagged his head morosely. “Voman dead! Not good.”
“Not looking,” I agreed, retrieving a beer from the fridge.
Angie flopped onto an overstuffed armchair. “Not looking,” Angie agreed. “What are we going to do, Garth? They know where we live! And the police are going to come back. They’re going to find out about Marti. Did you see Tsilzer’s smile?”
Otto got excited again. “KGB smile? Oh! Oh, this very bad, KGB him to smile you!”
“Otto, cool it,” I managed not to shout. “Let’s remain calm. We can always call them, ask them about who the victim was, and then say, ‘Who? Why, we know her!’ And so on. I mean, we didn’t get a look at her. We only have Nicholas’s word that it’s Marti. We’re on solid ground.” I wondered briefly if there was any possibility Nicholas was fibbing. For what reason? There was no telling.
“They’re going to talk to Nicholas. What if his story—”
“We stuck to his story, remember? We made sure we didn’t get a look at the body, we didn’t offer any information. Besides, it was Nicholas who actually saw that it was Marti, not us. We didn’t touch her.”
“Eetz good. Garv no voman touch to dead.” Otto mumbled from where he sat cross-legged on the floor.
“But you’re right,” I continued. “We should probably just spill the Marti thing, tell them everything, let them work it out. Or not. But we’ve got to steer our way out of this.”
“Garth, what if this warning means that we shouldn’t tell the police anything either?”
“Well, you’d think they’d have sent a more explicit message if—” My eye suddenly caught the red blinking light of my answering machine. I went over and pressed the Replay button. It burbled like an angry gerbil, beeped, and played. There was just the ambient sound of a public pay phone, maybe in a bar. After a moment, a muffled nasal voice spoke slowly.
“Little Miss Muffet. Sat on a tuffet. Along came a spider. She called the cops. The spider bit her. Little Miss Muffet died. The spider didn’t have to bite nobody else.” That was it.
“Who Muffet, Garv, tell to me?”
“Woman on the steps, Otto.” Angie and I shared a moment of dread. “I guess that answers your question, Angie. Now what’ll we do?”
The phone rang and I let the machine pick up. “Yes, I’m calling for Mr. Garth Carson?” It sounded like a phone solicitation. But at 2:00 A.M.? “We’re calling on behalf of St. Michael’s Hospital. Your brother, Nicholas, has been admitted, and we need to talk with you just as soon as possible.”
Chapter 16
Like most emergency rooms I’d seen in New York, this one was strewn with people in various states of disrepair. Folks with bloody towels wrapped around their hands (missing digits?), others puking into pans (cyanide poisoning, for all anyone knew), others flat on their backs groaning (acute appendicitis, perhaps). And as usual, the staff only seemed concerned with “processing” those who were actively dripping blood onto the carpet. I marched up to the admissions desk. Next to the desk was parked some poor son of a bitch in a wheelchair who looked like his face had hit the windshield. The nurse’s station was vacant, and there was no bell to ring for assistance. Surprise, surprise.
“Don’t thuppose you could thpare a drink for a fellow General Buster fan down on his luck?”
I turned once, then twice, to the swollen face next to me in the wheelchair. Realizing it was Nicholas, I flinched in surprise. The large hands of an even larger orderly on Nicholas’s shoulders kept my brother from escaping his seat.
“I know,
not a pwetty thight. Thign me out, will ya, Garth? That’ll make Mighty Joe Young here loothen his gwip long enough that we can get out of here and make last call over at Dew Dwop Inn.”
“Jumpin’ Jesus . . .” was all I could muster. His normally slim, angular face was all puffed out, red, and scratched. It was like a doll head had been snapped onto my brother’s body and was mimicking Nicholas’s argot. A doctor breezing through the room happened to look up from his clipboard long enough to register me talking to Nicholas, and he detoured.
“Are you Mr. Palihnic’s brother?”
“Yes, I—”
“I’m Doctor Schumate. You should know that your brother is refusing an MRI scan.” A ballpoint pen clicked nervously in Doc’s hand. “There’s a strong possibility that he’s suffering from a concussion, or worse. Subdural hematoma is a distinct possibility.”
“Yeth, but how’th my cholesterol, Doc? Maybe I thould cut back on the liverwurst, whaya t’ink?”
“This isn’t a game, Mr. Palihnic.” Doc waved an admonishing pen in front of Nicholas’s face, and turned back to me. “If you— I beg your pardon!”
Nicholas caught the orderly off guard, lunged forward, and grabbed Doc’s pen in his teeth, growling.
“Mr. Palihnic! Please!” Doc struggled to get his pen back from my brother. “You’re being childish, Mr. Palihnic!” The lifegiver’s glance around the emergency room at the growing smiles among the wounded betrayed he was interested more in his image than retrieving the pen.
“Nicholas, maybe you should stay and have the MRI, huh?”
Those in the room who had an ounce of humor left eked out enough chuckles to make Doc turn red, let go of the pen, and storm out of the emergency room. “Nurse,” his voice yelped from the next room.
Nicholas spat the pen on the floor. “Garth, I want outta here now. I need you to thtand by me.” He looked up at the orderly. “You can let go now, Junior. To keep me here against my will is unlawful imprithonment, a cwime punishable by up to three years in a thtate penitentiary. I can get a cop, if you want. There’s always one parked outhide a hothpital.”
“I’ll take him home,” I reassured.
Joe rolled his eyes and stepped back. I helped Nicholas to his feet.
“I can walk, Garth, they only mamboed on my fathe.”
“Excuse me!” A nurse burst into the room, nervously fussing with the front of her cardigan. “He’s not permitted to leave!”
The first thing that popped into my mind was something akin to one of Otto’s colorful Russian expletives. But I learned a few years back to count to three before replying. Five, better still.
“He can’t leave until he’s signed out!” she shrieked.
“I happen to agree with you that he should stay, but he wants to leave.” She could see my slow burn. “So we’re signing out. Now.”
There was a taxi sitting in front of the hospital, and we interrupted the cabbie’s Fab Form break. I folded Nicholas into the backseat and gave the driver my address.
“Belay that order, cabbie. Downtown, corner of Water an’ Dover, next to the bridge.” Nicholas held a hand up to my face. “I know, Angie wants to nurthe me back to health. Forget it. They know where you live, but not where I live.”
“Who? What happened to your face?”
“Our fwiends, the retwos, happened to my face. Real pwos, though, gotta hand it to ’em. Use the flat of their handth, with gwoves. No bwoken teeth. Lipth cut on the inthide, from my teeth. Nose is bwoke again, but what the hell. Didn’t blind me or collapse my twachea. Mainly scwatches, swelling. In a coupla days, I’ll look like a Tawwyton Thmoker, an’ thath all.” He widened one of his black eyes as if to prove it. The white was shot with bloody veins.
“I know the doc was an asshole—”
“Thow me one that ain’t,” he growled.
“—but you should see someone about your head. There could be bleeding.”
His twisted lips coughed a laugh. “I doubt it. They held me off the gwound by the arms tho my head didn’t hit the fwoor or anything. My neck, that’ll be thtiff for a few days. And a headache? I’ve got the world’s wortht. Tylenol and codeine? Plathebos. Cabbie? Pull over to this liquor store. Yeah, ’ere. Garth, you wanna get your little brother some scotch, please?”
“Is that a good idea?”
“Didn’t you know scotch is an anticoagulant, Doc Cawthon? Thins the blood, break up the clots you’re so worried about forming on my bwain. Make it Macallan, huh? No thense in half meathures.”
We pulled over and I paid way too much money for the single malt. But it didn’t take long.
“Recognize the guys who did this?” I asked once we were back on track.
“Maybe . . .” Which I knew from past experience meant he wasn’t telling. “Driver? You know the car wash down here on the left? Let’s go through the wash, okay? My tweat.”
“Something is wrong with your brain. A car wash?” I said.
“Please, Garth, I won’t tell you how to cwean a buffawo hide if you don’t— Yeah, cabbie, over there.”
In a few minutes we were in the car wash, sudsy rivulets flowing down all the glass. The driver didn’t seem to think this was unusual. I guess some cabbies have seen it all.
“Here.” Nicholas pulled what looked like a sausage in leather bondage from his torn jacket.
“What’s this? A blackjack?”
“Take it. I didn’t get a cwack at them. Maybe you will.”
I pushed it away. “Where’d this happen, Nicholas? Near my place?”
“Naw. I went back uptown t’another retwo hangout.” He sipped from the bottle and convulsed with pain. A wall of undulating felt strips approached the windshield and slithered like an octopus over the top of the car. “Thon of a . . . bitch, that thmarth! Damn! I know a girl, a waitress and singer. I asked for her at the bar. I got a note telling me to come backstage. I go into a woom, as directed, and there’s four guys behind the door, in dinner jackets, crew cuts, and plaid cummerbunds like the frickin’ Four Lads, ’sept they got Ace bandages wrapped around their faces.”
“Like mummies?” The jet-nozzle rain frothed up soapsuds on all sides, the watery image of a phalanx of huge pink paint rollers fast approaching.
“Yeah, like mummies, Garth. Common pwactice in some circles. Beats wubber Nixon or Pluto masks. Better pewipheral vision too. Then they hustle me out back, into a van, and start driving an’ hitting. Dropped me near the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, stupid schmucks.” He laughed briefly before shooting back more scotch, whereupon he cursed bitterly for a few fractured sentences. The pink rollers drummed along the hood, fender, roof, and doors. It was raining again.
“I can’t believe you can even chuckle about—”
“Cameras, Garth! They got camenas all over the pwace to watch the traffic backup for the Lincoln Tunnel. I know people who know people. Might just be able to lift the license plate off the video. Too bad it wasn’t daylight.”
“I thought these types use stolen cars.”
I got a disappointed stare from one of his bloody eyes. “Excuse me, Mr. Fwea Market, but just what do you know about those types?”
I shrugged.
“Well, I got a question for you, bwother. Just what kind of types are you familiar with that wear plaid cummerbunds and dinner jackets to a thumping?”
“Okay, Nicholas, okay.” A wind tunnel had been activated in the car wash, droplets racing every which way on the glass.
“You know, mobsters, they don’t thteal cars before taking thomeone for a ride. They take the family thedan. They got the juice, not like some Podunk jokers holding up a Piggly Wiggly, you know, those types. You ask me? Mummies in plaid cummerbunds are pwetty confident. They had juice.”
“Just how— Oh, forget it.”
“Out with it.”
I gave him a hard look. The whole episode—from Marti’s murder to Nicholas getting pummeled—was making me ill. My stomach was in knots. But it was the intellectual and emotion
al impact of this kind of violence and intimidation that had my mind floundering. I was in danger. Angie was in danger. They knew where I lived. The police were even a threat to me. The scenario was largely foreign and completely repulsive, and my immediate childish reflex was to reach out and stop it like a record on a turntable. Or maybe even spin the record back to the start and never let this wretched song be played.
“Is this what you wanted out of life?” I finally blurted. “Sleazing around bars, getting beat up, being on familiar terms with practices of the world’s underbelly? Jeez. You were smart, ambitious . . .”
“I’ve changed my mind.” He laughed bitterly. “In with it, big brother. In with it.”
The watery windshield began to glow brightly as the taxi emerged from the far end of the car wash. “Cabbie? We’re gonna duck down here under the seat. No towel dwy. Flip on your Off Duty light, and dwive down Broadway like you’re goin’ home, ’kay?”
The driver cleared his throat. “That’s extra.”
“Jeez, I already picked up the car wash. Five bucks, ’kay?”
The driver shrugged. “Yeah.”
I lay down on the seat, my unruly hair catching on Nicholas’s bristly scalp. “Why are we—”
“If we’re being followed, they’ll think we thkipped out of the cab in the car wash and ditched them.”
“Hmm. Not so dumb, little brother.”
“Well, gee whith,” Nicholas snickered.
“Sorry. About the lecturing, I mean.”
He didn’t say anything, for once. If you knew Nicholas, a shrug was about the best response to an apology you could hope for. As we lay there, the streetlights flashed overhead on the cab ceiling, and I was reminded of backyard camping trips we did together when he was seven and I was ten. Headlights from cars passing on the lane would cut through the yard and reflect off the neighbor’s side windows, shimmering across the rippling tent roof like aurora borealis. It would be fall—chilly enough, Mom said, so we wouldn’t get eaten by mosquitoes or steam like ears of corn in our musty Army-surplus mummy bags. Lots of leaves were still on the trees, but dry and scratching together in the breeze, mimicking the sound of water falling on stone. Wafting leaves would pass across the headlight flickers in oddly shaped shadows. Nicholas and I would imagine we were in the Yukon, sleeping outside our gold mine (Nicholas’s idea), gazing at the northern lights, silhouettes of satellites passing through the glowing dust clouds. We’d talk about the mine, about how deep it was, how we’d have helmets with lights on them, eat nothing but hot dogs, french fries, and milkshakes, have our own jackhammers and use dynamite every day. Back then, Nicholas and I occasionally shared the boundless imagination all youngsters possess. And as brothers we were close primarily because we belonged to and shared the trials and indignities (bow ties, family photos, tea at Aunt Jilly’s, dancing lessons) imposed by our parents. But the competitive wedge of the teen years was driven between us, and as older brother I had nothing to say that he cared to hear.
Pipsqueak Page 10